Tourism problems, challenges and solutions - Problems

While the world faces many problems, most ofwhich affect tourism and hospitality to a greateror lesser degree, there are four significant generalproblems that emerge from the articles to be ofparticular relevance to tourism and hospitality.

The problem of definitionsDespite the fact that the terms ‘tourism’ and ‘hospitality’ are widely used, therecontinues to be a lack of agreement as to exactly what each of these encompassesand as to the relationship between them. In this discussion, we take tourism tobe an all-encompassing term covering every aspect of people staying away fromhome, and hospitality to be a specific aspect of this, dealing with accommodationand feeding tourists. One difficulty, of course, is that the hospitality industryalso feeds and accommodates many people who are not tourists.In reality ‘tourism’ is often interpreted quite narrowly, i.e. as the flow ofvisitors from one country to another. This is because, like many of the authorsof articles, academics and researchers generally rely heavilyon the World Tourism Organization (WTO) as their principal source of data.Yet in many parts of the world, particularly the United States and China,there are very high levels of domestic tourism. Even today only about 10%of the US population has a passport.This problem of differentiating between international and domestic tourismis likely to become even more severe. If the European Union should becomethe United States of Europe, intra-regional travel within the Union will ceaseto be international tourism regardless of its purpose. (Travel between HongKong and PRC has already ceased to be international tourist travel, althoughthe volume of traffic has increased and the purpose changed little.)It is clear there is also a great deal of inconsistency between data, whichis largely due to the problems of definition. Purpose of visit is one such definitionalproblem. When tourism is not defined it generally means pleasuretourism, people on holidays, but formal definitions (like that of the WTO)tend to include anyone travelling. Witt and Song state in this volume that70% of worldwide trips were holidays, 15% were business and 10% wererelated to visiting friends and relatives (VFR). Yet the most recent HorwathInternational global hotel study (1999) identifies only 50% of occupancyderiving from the leisure traveller and 46% from business guests. From thehospitality and airline industries’ point of view the business traveller isextremely important and often the major focus of attention and effort.The apparent inconsistency in figures is partly because so many pleasuretourists stay in less conventional accommodation. In Scotland, for example,Scottish Tourist Board figures published in 1999 show that hotel accommodationmakes up only about 40% of total tourist accommodation, excludingVFR beds. Rather too many surveys concentrate solely on hotel guests, thusmuch less is known about other staying visitors. Domestic tourists are morelikely than international tourists to use accommodation other than hotels asthey are better placed to know about alternatives. Until the problems relatingto the definitions of tourism and hospitality are resolved and the definitionsbecome all-encompassing, applying with equal validity to all regions, thereare likely to be continued difficulties and inconsistencies in understandingtourism and travel data and statistics.

The problem of forecasting and predicting growth and changeA feature of this text has been the forecasts about tourism’s future. Witt andSong are clear about which methods work, and Frechtling (also in this volume)makes some telling points about which factors will influence tourism in thenext decade. But most econometric and statistical trend projections are basedon the principle of ceteris paribus – all things remaining equal. What if theydo not? A feature of the 20th century, especially the second half of the century,was relative stability in many aspects of tourism, but this may not be truefor the 21st century.Global tourism is forecast to grow, but overall growth forecasts hide tremendousdifferences between regions and countries. According to Teye (thisvolume) Africa receives only 4% of all international tourists and only 2%of total international tourism receipts. He shows that many African countriesare economically worse off now than they were 40 years ago, still over-relianton agricultural and/or mineral production, with tourism presenting bothcultural and environmental challenges. He concludes that there have beenand still are a myriad of obstacles to tourism development, such as politicalinstability, economic restructuring, human resource constraints, lack ofregional co-operation and a lack of basic infrastructure.An optimistic view of Europe and North America is that at best theirtourism industries are stable. In their respective chapters, Cook states thatshort-term growth in US arrivals will be slow, whilst Cleverdon suggeststourism in Europe is growing at a rate of 3% compared with a global rateof 4%, and its market share is forecast to decline from 59% (1995) to 47%by 2020. On the other hand South America looks set for a period of sustainedtourism growth. Arrivals have been growing at an annual rate of 9% andreceipts at 12%. It has some tremendous advantages, including its relativeproximity to lucrative North American markets, historic and language linkswith Europe, and excellent natural resources (rainforest/Andes/beaches).Asia Pacific also seems to be on an upturn. Chamberlain (this volume)quotes the WTO as forecasting that this region will ‘grow faster than anyother’ and will pass the Americas to become second to Europe in the numberof visitor arrivals. This means five times as many visitors in 2020 as in 1998– admittedly a low year – although there may be some difficulty in accommodatingthat number of visitors and it might pose strains on the infrastructurein the region. Asia Pacific illustrates perfectly how vulnerable these industriesare to unexpected events. The recent financial crisis in this region ledto dramatic falls in arrivals, hotel rates and hotel occupancies, not only inthe Pacific region but globally . This kind of event makes forecasting tourismperformance in some regions almost impossible. No one can predict whatmight happen in the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent and the RussianFederation. Political instability, economic turbulence and religious differencescould all have negative effects on potential tourism development and growth.Overall there is evidence of extremely rapid growth in some regions, thatthis growth will continue, and that other regions will begin to attain a greatershare of tourism in the years ahead. But there is really no such thing as a‘fair share’ despite what ministers and NTOs say. Not everywhere needs orcan expect to attract large numbers of tourists. Those places that have notgrown significantly or do not have major tourism industries generally are inthat position for good reasons. Cetron (this volume) identified some of thesereasons – a lack of perceived attractions compared to other areas, relative orabsolute inaccessibility, unsuitable climate, political regimes which discouragetourism, problems of security, health and safety, relatively high cost and oftena combination of several of these.What is needed is an examination of which, if any, of these elements arelikely to change significantly in the short- to medium-term future, to understandif those regions are likely to see major increases in tourism. Even then,should such a change in situation come about, we need to see whether theregion is appropriately equipped to handle such an increase effectively. Rapidpercentage growth is rather easy from a low base, but long-term sustainedgrowth is what is important, if indeed it is growth that is desired. If theworld is serious about sustainable development and living within the limitsof the resources available, then growth, especially rapid growth, may not bethe pattern desired or acceptable in all regions. This aspect is rarely tackledin forecasts, where the focus is normally on growth.

The problem of industry characteristicsIt seems clear there is going to be continued growth of global brands suchas McDonalds and Burger King, Hilton and Holiday Inn, British Airways,One World Alliance, Thomas Cook and American Express, Avis and Hertz.Despite the fact that the Internet makes some people suggest the brand isdead, big firms will continue. There are still economies of scale to be achievedby being big, even in a world of e-commerce, as the AOL–Time Warnermerger demonstrates. But the industries will continue to have many smalloperators managing unique operations on a local basis. One of the commentsfrequently made about tourism is its fragmentation and the difficulty thisposes for instituting controls, particularly self-regulation by the industry. Itoften results in multiple, sometimes opposing, objectives among differentplayers, which require different solutions in different locations. This is oneof the reasons for the frequent lack of application and success of nationalmaster plans. Despite the globalization trends to which Chamberlain andothers refer in this volume, there is likely to remain a large element of thetourism industry made up of very small players. The web should encourageand assist the maintenance of some of this diversity.The tourism workforce is typically described as having low ability andfew skills. Large numbers of young people are employed in these industries,expected to work long, unsociable hours, paid below average wages resultingin extremely high levels of staff turnover. This pattern may not be able tocontinue, if only because in many countries in the developed world therewill be fewer young people to be employed under these or any conditionsbecause of changing demographics. Changes in the composition of populations,nationally and globally, are likely to have major, if still uncertain effectson all aspects of tourism and hospitality in the coming century.

The problem of climate changeA key problem that tourism and hospitality has to face is climate change.This issue could have greater effects on tomorrow’s world and tourism andhospitality in particular than anything else discussed so far. Two islands havedisappeared already because of rising sea levels, and the effects of El Ninoand weather instability throughout the world have been terrible in recentyears. The most worrying aspect is that very little is known about the fullnature or level of these effects. To all intents and purposes the tourism andhospitality industries appear to have buried their heads in the sand and seemintent on ignoring what could be the major problem of the century.Some of the likely effects as well as rising sea levels, include negativeeffects on ski areas with fewer days of snow-cover, increased cloud and rainfallin some areas, and increased temperatures and greater sun exposure inother parts of the world, with general increased turbulence and unpredictabilityof weather. Lohmann (this volume) showed that many of these are seriousenough to at least threaten, if not change, the patterns of tourism and to havesignificant impacts on hospitality operations.If sea levels do rise significantly as forecast, many world cities includingLondon, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Washington, Sydney and Singapore would beunder water, as well as Bangladesh, the Maldives, the Seychelles, theNetherlands and Florida among others. There would be economic, politicaland social turmoil. Tourism depends on global economic well-being and thiswould not exist if this scenario became reality.At this time, however, it seems that only the insurance and banking industrieshave begun to take real notice of what is likely to be a significantproblem, not just for our industries but the world as a whole. Even if serioussteps are taken to reduce the problem, it will be decades before the processis reversed, if indeed, it can be reversed.It is worrying that in general the problem is being ignored by forecastersand by planners. It seems rather naive, for example, to produce a tourismmaster plan for a place that might be under water by the time the plan isready to be implemented.